After months of bad press, here at last was an act of genuine humanitarianism by U.S. troops in Iraq that could have been trumpeted to the skies: a unit of National Guard troops — part-time citizen-soldiers from Oregon — rescuing a group of prisoners from sadistic torture by the security forces of the "sovereign" Iraqi government. Yet the incident was buried by U.S. brass, who repudiated their own soldiers — and backed the Iraqi torturers.

It happened on June 29 — the first full day of Iraqi "sovereignty" — when a guardsman on routine patrol in an observation tower near a Baghdad prison saw Iraqi guards beating bound and blindfolded prisoners with metal rods, The Oregonian reported this week. The soldier called in the atrocity, and men from his unit were ordered into the prison. There they found dozens of prisoners — including children — bloodied, bruised, shot, starving, crammed into concrete pens, lying in their own filth. Torture implements were scattered through the compound, the paper said: "rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals."

The Guard troops — many of whom said they’d been shamed by the American atrocities at Abu Ghraib — disarmed the Iraqi security men and began giving first aid, water and food to the prisoners. They questioned the mysterious Iraqi civilian in charge — an "obese man" in swank mufti. He told them there had been no torture at all — and anyway, these prisoners were just street scum: "thieves, users of marijuana and other types of bad people," according to the written account of the incident provided by eyewitness Captain Jarrell Southall and corroborated by the other soldiers.

There was no claim that the prisoners were insurgents or terrorists. Most of them had been rounded up in the poorest sections of Baghdad during broad, brutal "security sweeps" ordered by Iyad Allawi, the former terrorist chieftain and Baathist Party enforcer now serving as the unelected overseer of the Bush Regime’s Iraqi plantation. (In this, the prisoners doubtless shared the fate of their brethren in Abu Ghraib, where the Red Cross says that 70 percent to 90 percent of the thousands of captives taken by the Americans were innocent of wrongdoing.)

Having stopped the torture, the Oregon soldiers asked for further orders: What should they do now? The request was relayed far up through the chain of command, and the answer came back from on high: Go away — and give the prisoners back to the men who were torturing them. Give back the weapons, give back the torture tools, stop helping the prisoners, mind your own business.

And that was it. The American troops, outraged but obedient, withdrew. The prisoners — the wounded men, the bleeding children — were bound up again and shoved back into the stinking pits. Why? It’s simple. Because the Iraqi security goons were doing exactly what George W. Bush wanted them to do.

One year ago this month, we noted here that Bush had begun hiring agents of Saddam’s murderous security service, the Mukhabarat — "an instrument renowned across the Arab world for its casual use of torture, fear, intimidation, rape and imprisonment," as The Washington Post described it then. Top Bush officials confirmed they were secretly putting dozens, perhaps hundreds of Saddam’s most vicious killers and rapists on the U.S. payroll, the Post reported.

We must admit to shockingly childish naivete in that earlier column. Although the Eye did voice some mild criticism of Bush’s Mukhabarat embrace ("a monstrous copulation of rapacious conquerors with bloodthirsty scum," was the demure phrase), at the time we assumed Bush was simply looking for local proxies to do his dirty work, so American soldiers wouldn’t have to. Now, of course, we all know that Bush and his top legal advisers had already spent months concocting devious "justifications" for a systematic torture regimen to be used by U.S. forces throughout a global gulag of hidey holes, secret prisons, holding pens and concentration camps. The Abu Ghraib crimes that so shamed the Oregon soldiers are just one small chunk of a giant dungheap that is very slowly but surely oozing into view — and creeping up toward its Oval originators.

So Bush obviously didn’t want the Mukhabarat as a proxy for the dirty work; he was glad — even eager — to have Americans taint themselves with such evil. Saddam’s men were not substitutes but reinforcements, allies, comrades-in-arms in the noble crusade to put a more pliable strongman on Iraq’s throne. Of course, the U.S. military presence in Iraq — planned years ago by Bushist cadres — is wildly unpopular among the conquered. Thus for Bush’s great work of looting and dominance to continue, the Iraqi people must be beaten down — with metal rods, if necessary.

And that’s what it’s all about: loot. Bush’s own auditors confessed last month that at least $8.8 billion in Iraqi oil money controlled by the Americans is now unaccounted for, Colonel David Hackworth reports in DefenseWatch. This secret siphon — doubtless sloshing into offshore accounts around the world, as Hackworth notes — is on top of the tens of billions in tax dollars openly pumped to Bush’s corporate cronies and campaign donors.

But that’s just the short-end money. Getting a stranglehold on world oil supplies through the strategic Iraqi bottleneck — the ultimate object of the whole blood-soaked exercise — will be worth trillions as reserves begin running out in the coming decades. For Bush is not just thinking of himself, you see; no, he’s fighting to secure the future for generations of corrupt elitists yet unborn.

And for that, he needs terrorists, torturers, ruthless goons — not a bunch of Oregon boy scouts gumming up the works with acts of mercy.

The far-right in Ukraine are acting as the vanguard of a protest movement that is being reported as pro-democracy. The situation on the ground is not as simple as pro-EU and trade versus pro-Putin and Russian hegemony in the region.
When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine’s opposition leaders in December, he shared a table and later a stage with the leader of the extreme far-right Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok.
This is Oleh Tyahnybok, he has claimed a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" (...)

Your support here: http://www.peaceinsyria.org/support.php
We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012. This initiative consists in calling for a delegation of highranking personalities and public figures to go to Syria in order to (...)

At first glance, the results of America’s 2012 election appear to be a triumph for social, racial, and economic justice and progress in the United States: California voters passed a proposition requiring the rich to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden; Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized the recreational use of marijuana, while Massachusetts approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes; Washington and two other states, Maine and Maryland, legalized same-sex (...)

In a 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s animated series South Park, an election was held to determine whether the new mascot for the town’s elementary school would be a “giant douche” or a “turd sandwich.” Confronted with these two equally unpalatable choices, one child, Stan Marsh, refused to vote at all, which resulted in his ostracization and subsequent banishment from the town.
Although this satirical vulgarity was intended as a commentary on the two (...)

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If there is one major inconsistency in life, it is that young people who know little more than family, friends and school are suddenly, at the age of eighteen, supposed to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, because of their limited life experiences, the illusions they have about certain occupations do not always comport to the realities.
I discovered this the first time I went to college. About a year into my studies, I (...)

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Disillusioned with the machinations of so-called “traditional” colleges, I became an adjunct instructor at several “for-profit” colleges.
Thanks largely to the power and pervasiveness of the Internet, “for-profit” colleges (hereinafter for-profits) have become a growing phenomenon in America. They have also been the subject of much political debate and the focus of a Frontline special entitled College Inc.
Unlike traditional (...)

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Several years ago, a young lady came into the college where I was teaching to inquire about a full-time instructor’s position in the sociology department. She was advised that only adjunct positions were available. Her response was, “No thanks. Once an adjunct, always an adjunct.”
Her words still echo in my mind.
Even as colleges and universities raise their tuition costs, they are relying more and more on adjunct instructors. Adjuncts are (...)

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When The Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution over two hundred years ago, Americans were blessed with many rights considered to be “fundamental.” One conspicuously missing, however, was the right to an education.
This was not surprising given the tenor of the times. America was primarily an agrarian culture, and education, especially higher education, was viewed as a privilege reserved for the children of the rich and (...)

If there is one universal question that haunts all human beings at some point in their lives, it is, “Why do we die?”
Death, after all, is the great illogic. It ultimately claims all, the rich and the poor, the mighty and the small, the good and the evil. Death also has the capability to make most human pursuits—such as the quest for wealth, fame and power—vacuous and fleeting.
Given this reality, I have often wondered why so many people are still willing to (...)

How much corruption can a “democracy” endure before it ceases to be a democracy?
If five venal, mendacious, duplicitous, amoral, biased and (dare I say it) satanic Supreme Court “justices”—John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy—have their way, America will soon find out.
In several previous articles for Pravda.Ru, I have consistently warned how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision is one of the (...)

Imagine, if you will, that the United States government passes a law banning advertisers from sponsoring commercials on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox (Faux) “News” Network.
On one hand, there would be two decided advantages to this ban: The National IQ would undoubtedly increase several percentage points, and manipulative pseudo-journalists would no longer be able to appeal to the basest instincts in human nature for ratings and profit while (...)

LIVE, from the State that brought you Senator Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin voters now proudly present, fresh from his recall election victory, Governor Scott Walker!
At first glance, it is almost unfathomable that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have voted to retain Scott Walker as Wisconsin’s governor. This, after all, is a man who openly declared he is trying to destroy the rights of workers through a “divide and conquer” strategy; who received 61% of the (...)

A question I’ve frequently been asked since I began writing for Pravda.Ru in 2003 is, “Why did you become disillusioned with the practice of law?”
This question is understandable, particularly since, in most people’s minds, being an attorney is synonymous with wealth and political power.
I’ve always been reluctant to answer this question for fear it will discourage conscientious and ethical people from pursuing careers in the legal profession—a (...)